Cooler Master HAF 912 Review - PAGE 3

Now to poke around under the "hood", as one might say. One of the features that I really like about Cooler Master products is the wealth of information that they have on their website. Even before you buy one of their products you can browse around and find such gems as The User's Manual or the Technical Product Sheet. This online availiablity is highly useful to me as a consumer, and I know that I am not the only one who appreciates the little details like these.

The two fans that come shipped with this case are made by Cooler Master, but I was unable to find a spec sheet on these fan models, only various forums posts where people "offered" what they "knew" about them. Regardless, they are decent fans and are completely silent. As an added bonus, be sure to check out the Cooler Master File Database that I found when researching these fans.

Opening the side panel, you can see that here too Cooler Master wanted to give the user a variety of options with cooling. The fan port on the door supports either 120mm or 140mm fans, and the first stock fan can be seen in the CPU exhaust position. The motherboard tray has a large pass-through hole to support easy mounting of even the largest processor heatsinks. All of the accessories and drive rails are located in a cardboard box securely twist-tied to the removable hard drive cage. You know that it was pretty darn secure if it didnt break loose through the rigours of the US parcel system

For accesories, Cooler Master included a 2.5" to 3.5" SSD drive bay converter capable of mounting two SSD's at the same time, two metal drive rails for your 3.5" external drive, and a plenthora of plastic drive clips which the rail system uses to hold the rest of the drives. There is also a plastic bag containing motherboard stand-offs, extra screws, and jumpers.

The backside of the motherboard has plenty of holes for cable management, and as mentioned before there is a large pass-through hole for HSF installation. Also evident from this side are the four screws that hold in the removable 3.5" HDD cage. The power cable for the solitary front intake fan can also be seen here, and even though it is natively pinned for the 3-Pin motherboard mount, it comes with a converter to fit into a 4-pin molex.

The front panel is held securely to the case via three plastic clips to a side. It is a very simple matter to push these clips in and pop out the front bezel. With this removed from the case, the second stock 120mm fan is visible, as are the mounting holes for a second 120mm fan. Cooler Master also thought to put in lots of cable pass-through holes in the front steel mesh for both the fan power cables, and possibly the SATA data lines.

Now we finally get to the hard drive cages! The top cage is removable from the case entirely and supports up to four hard drives oriented transverse to the rest of the case. Below it is a smaller cage that can hold two normal 3.5" HDD's and is riveted to the case. Combining these two cages will give you the insane six 3.5" hard drive count, but you can still fit even more! Right next to those 3.5" cages is a smaller 2.5" cage that is by default mounted on the bottom of the case, further back toward the power supply. This is just one of three possible locations for this cage, as there are also mounting holes in the bottom of the 5.25" cage, and inside the removable 3.5" cage itself in the off chance that you have a power supply longer than 190mm (7.5 inches). With the provided 5.25"->3.5" metal brackets, you can also put a hard drive in the bottom 5.25" bay, and if you have 4 SSD's you can use the provided plastic converter and have a grand total of 10 hard drives in this mid-tower case! As a hard drive and storage enthusiast I am exceedingly pleased to see the level of forethought that went into the design of this case.

Now that I finally have all the test hardware plugged in, it is time to put everything through its paces and see how efficient this case is at cooling everything.

Ah ok, that's what I was wondering about the card size because I thought that looked awfully tight in there with a 5870 if someone was going to fit in a 5970. I very unlikely would ever get something like a 5970 regardless though but good to be assured these other cards can fit with the cages in.

duneworldNot quite sure if you are saying that the 300 or the 912 has more options.... But I think they are about evenly matched. Here are my thoughts: The hard drive cages are better oriented in the 912, The cooling is better out-of-the-box in the 300, the aesthetics are simpler in the 300, there are dedicated spots for SSD's in the 912.

I was saying that in the UK there are more high quality options for cases at the £60 price point, so the HAF 912 Plus is just one of many options; it is not a clear winner.I think that the HAF 912 is a much better case than the Antec 300, and a price difference of £10 isn't significant enough to make me think the Antec 300 is the better option, again, it's just that the HAF 912 isn't the clear winner at £60, it definitely would be at £50.

Gravity, there is actually a version of the case, the HAF 912 Plus that has a black interior, which is the version which is widely available in the UK.

With the top harddrive bay left installed you can fit a graphics card up to 27cm in length, which would be enough for a 6970 or original reference 5870 or GTX 580 and the like, but not a 5970, if you remove the top harddrive bay there isn't anything it can't fit.

I really think they should have painted the insides black, cause the way it is just makes it look like a plain jane ugly case on the inside.

Not sure why the hdd wires are toward the outside? Well since there's not really a window panel it really doesn't matter, just commits to the ugly like an ugly chick with jacked up war-paint. I guess the way it's wired up it doesn't seem like it was done in such a way to show the case can support as good of wire management as the holes and design seem to possibly allow.

Exactly what size is there allowed to fit GPU in?

Are you really saving money though if you have to run out and byof (buy your own fans)? Gives you more options. I think maybe I could take a liking to the case the more I look at it. Maybe it's intended to be 'UV' ready lol.

Outside looks decent, similar to other HAF cases.Do the fans that come with it light up?

hiigaranYeah it is a pretty nifty case for not much money. The Antec 300 which was is my go-to case for years is pretty much the exact same price at the moment and I don't like the hard drive configuration quite as much as in this case.

duneworldNot quite sure if you are saying that the 300 or the 912 has more options.... But I think they are about evenly matched. Here are my thoughts: The hard drive cages are better oriented in the 912, The cooling is better out-of-the-box in the 300, the aesthetics are simpler in the 300, there are dedicated spots for SSD's in the 912.

dlbI think that the 912 could do much better in cooling, but you would need to modify things in order to improve air flow and management. I am not sure as to why this case posted the temps it did. It certainly has enough fans in it to move a good quantity of air.

this case has better average cooling performance than the Cooler Master 932

???? Whaaaaa ???? In the graphs shown in the review, the only time the 912 had better cooling was in the last HDD temps. All the other temps were higher, sometimes significantly higher, esp. the CPU temps which are probably the most important, or at least as important as the GPU temps. Other than the single off-base comment, I found the review to be well done and well written. Nice work, and nice case!

Apparently in the US it is quite the competitor to the Antec 300, unfortunately atm I've only ever seen it being about £10 more expensive than the 300 in the UK, which is £60, where there are more options and it isn't necessarily the best option, mostly for aesthetic reasons tho. And neither of them are particularly strong budget options being over £50.

impressive case, though i found the lack of cpu cooling performance to be my dealbreaker. though for 60 bucks, i guess i wouldnt mind recommending this to others in need of a good case that isnt overly expensive.